The 5 Most Outrageous Employee Resignations In 2012

No matter how bad the economy is, some workers will always be so
fed up they feel they have no choice but to storm off and quit
their job.

But it seemed that 2012 brought a wave of workers who staged
high-profile resignations and cited ethical reasons for quitting.
A few were blasted as self-serving, but some were rewarded --
with praise, Internet fame and perhaps even a book deal. Take a
look, and then let us know how you have quit
your job -- or how you're planning to quit the next one.

One of the year's most high-profile resignations was when
investment banker Greg Smith penned a devastating op-ed in
The New
York Times, headlined, "Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs."

Smith used the piece, published in March, to describe his disgust
over the work culture at the Goldman Sachs, where he had worked
for a dozen years, including the height of the financial crisis.
"The interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way
the firm operates and thinks about making money," he wrote. The
company's stock
price dropped 3.4 percent on the Standard & Poor's
500 Financials Index immediately after the op-ed appeared.Many
(including Goldman colleagues) slammed Smith's resignation as
"opportunistic," saying that his career had reached a dead end.
Though a vice president, Smith had not been invited to become a
partner, which was "a red flag of sorts suggesting his days there
were numbered," according to Forbes.
Smith's subsequent book, for which he reportedly was paid $1.5
million, was roundly
panned.

2. Quitting On Live TV

Ethics was also the stated issue for a pair of
television news anchors in Bangor, Maine, who quit their jobs on
live TV in November. Without warning their bosses, anchors Cindy
Michaels and Tony Consiglio announced on the air that they were
resigning. "It's a little complicated," Michaels said after the
fact, "but we were expected to do somewhat unbalanced news,
politically, in general."

The station's vice president and general manager, Mike Palmer,
denied intervening in daily news production, but back in 2006,
he'd reportedly warned staff against coverage of global warming,
equating the subject with the Y2K and "killer bee" scares --
meaning much hysteria over nothing. But no big payday awaited the
anchors on the other side of the exit; Michaels announced plans
to work on a novel and his painting.

3. Scribbling A Resignation On A Price Tag

When a Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. employee
decided he no longer wanted to work for his "P****K" of
a boss, he chose a rather quiet way to announce his decision: He
wrote a message on a price tag of a store item, the Nuwave Pro
Infrared Oven. (The kitchen item is a multi-purpose cooker with
the ability to broil, roast, bake, barbecue, steam and dehydrate
food, for the cost of $119.99.)

It was on that price tag that he scribbled the putdown of his
manager. He also slammed the oven itself, or at least its users,
saying "THIS IS FOR FAT F***S." And then the final pronouncement:
"I'M QUITTING TODAY." So the worker probably was a bit surprised
when a photo of the price tag was posted on the anonymous online
forum, Reddit.
Since having been posted on Dec. 6, the post has generated some
45,000 votes of approval or disapproval.

4. Telling People In the Workplace, "You're Going To
Hell"

It's not clear Dorothy
Bond, principal of Haywood High School, in western
Tenn., set out to resign amid a homophobic tirade. But during a
school assembly in February, she allegedly told students "if
you're gay, you're going to hell" and gay students are "not on
God's path" and are "ruining their lives."

Outraged, some students immediately contacted the American Civil
Liberties Union, which in turn wrote a letter warning the school
system to let lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students
know they have a constitutional right to identify as gay. The
Human Rights Campaign, the country's largest LGBT civil rights
organization, also launched a petition against Bond's remarks,
which garnered 5,000 signatures in four hours. In short order,
Bond soon resigned.

5. Resigning Via Song

There's quitting
with style, and then there's announcing your decision in
song. That was the path chosen by barista Phil Sipka as he
resigned from his job at the trendy Robust Coffee Lounge in
Chicago in October was backed up a group known as The Voices.

His announcement, which was aired earlier this month on the
"Steve Harvey Show," felt more like a rehearsed tribute to the
band, Boyz II Men, than an indignant kiss off. "You know I said I
am going, yeah," intoned the five back-up singers.

And not everyone who watched the clip was convinced the quitting
was authentic. After it was posted to Reddit, commenter amobi25
wrote: "Obviously its fake ... Its just showing you HOW TO QUIT."

So How Should You Quit Your Job Next Year?

It's best for discontent workers to
talk to their manager about their concerns before they reach a
"boiling point," career coach Deborah Brown-Volkman said. And
don't think that leaving in a huff on principle is necessarily
going to endear you to colleagues. As Penelope Trunk, the founder
of Career Brazenist, noted when asked about Smith's quitting from
Goldman Sachs: "Does this guy think we are morons that we don't
know Goldman Sachs is about making money? It's not OK to trash
everyone around you for your change of heart."